Another house in Rodanthe on the Outer Banks has sunk into the Atlantic Ocean, marking the sixth to collapse along the coast of North Carolina in a short window of four years, as reported by the National Park Service.
Following the house’s collapse on Tuesday, about one mile of the beach along Ocean Drive was closed. Cape Hatteras National Seashore urged visitors to avoid beaches north of Sea Haven Drive into the southern area of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge due to dangerous debris on the beach and in the water.
National seashore employees moved dozens of pickup truckloads of debris to a nearby parking lot on Tuesday and Wednesday, during which the public was invited to help employees and a contractor solicited by the owner of the house, which was unoccupied when it fell.
The house’s collapse came days after severe weather struck numerous states, with powerful storms and a violent tornado bringing widespread destruction and killing nearly 30 people across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri.
North Carolina’s coast is almost completely comprised up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that are increasingly susceptible to storm surges and being washed over from the bay and sea as global temperatures warm and the tides move in closer.
A study published in Nature Communications last year found that since 2010, sea level rises along the country’s Southeast and Gulf coasts had reached rates that were “unprecedented in at least 120 years.”
“These rapid rates are unprecedented over at least the 20th century and they have been three times higher than the global average over the same period,” said Sönke Dangendorf, a Tulane professor who led the study.
As sea levels spike along NC’s Outer Banks, these islands usually move toward the mainland, complicating efforts to keep properties in place. According to the National Park Service, some beaches in the state have been losing up to 13 feet a year.
In 2022, a video of a beach house sinking into the Atlantic in Rodanthe went viral on social media, and in the same year, NASA published a report warning that sea levels along the U.S. could rise 12 inches by 2050, with the Southeast and Gulf coasts seeing the most considerable change. The report also said 13 million Americans could be displaced by 2100.
